


The Fall

by Wh1teOw1



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27988509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wh1teOw1/pseuds/Wh1teOw1
Summary: The breakup scene from Chapter 3 of Clotho, "Unraveling" from Edwards perspective, because angst.
Relationships: Edward Cullen/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The Fall

THE FALL

“Come for a walk with me.” I crushed back every other feeling. Every growing crack, every scream from the part of me that I needed to kill. That I needed to bury. I needed to do the right thing, the thing I should have done from the beginning. Unbidden, the memory of the first night I had to see her came to me, her softly asleep, her calling to me, reaching for me. 

_ “Come back…” _

She’d reached for her own death that night, and I had stupidly, selfishly let her.

I took her hand and led her into the edge of the forest outside her apartment building. I saw Jace dislocating her jaw again, I heard her tortured screaming as the venom pulsed inside of her. I remembered the horrid, unbroken keen of the heart monitor announcing her death,

Her  _ murder. _

I was no longer Edward, I was the monster I thought I could contain, only a monster could do what I was about to, could hurt this beautiful force of nature that stood in front of me now, her eyes tense, trying to hide her terror.

“Okay, let’s talk.” She was composed, almost stoic.

I let the sound of her unbeating heart run on a loop in my head, I stared at her mangled corpse.

“Eva, I’m afraid I have made a mistake.”  _ I should have run when I didn’t know you. I should have protected you. _

She inhaled deeply, and shifted her weight, planting her feet, as though she was about to be hit by something.

“What mistake would that be, Edward?” Her voice was quiet, cool, and she focused her eyes on the ground. The muscles in her jaw were tense, she was gritting her teeth.

“...I tried to script this, but I don’t think I can. Eva, what happened with Jasper, it made me think, I should say, it made this necessary. I’ve been waiting for the right time for a few weeks now, but it never felt right until, well, now.”

I let the hopelessness of her body under my fathers hands, the compressions over her broken ribs, the hiss of the releasing air from her punctured lung, overtake me. Her wheezing as she drowned in her own blood, in her own failing organs.  _ I had already killed her. _

_ 64 seconds. _

The lines were so practiced at this point, my body could do them without my mind.

“I made a lot of promises, and said a lot of things that...I realize now were just projected hopes, rather than honest feelings. As old as I am, you become lonely, and you interested me. The first person in a while to do so.”

Even still, the heresy I spoke tasted utterly putrid. I was waiting for her to call my bluff, laughing humorlessly. The next words were the hardest to speak, the things I knew would hurt her the most. Because I needed them to. 

“But the interest faded, and so did my infatuation, and I was trying to let you down easy, but that takes time, and while I need to go, I still don’t want you hurt. I may not love you, but I still care about your wellbeing. You’ve been very good to me.”

I watched the words settle on her, and she seemed to be swallowing air now, still not looking at me. She was so calm, I was certain she would call me out soon. 

_ Please, Eva, Call my bluff…  _ a desperate cry from the very worst of me. The one that wanted to stop now, to tell her it was a lie and beg for forgiveness, let her catch me, let her win.

Let her die.

“You’re saying your mistake was...believing your feelings were love?” 

“Unfortunately, yes.” I smiled, trying to soften the blow. I was meticulous in monitoring my facial expression, my body language.

“My family will be leaving, I certainly made a mess here, and my siblings are a little upset. But it’s better if we leave on a clean break. I assume I can trust you to keep our secret? If not for me, which is understandable, then Alice, Carlisle, Esme-”

“Of course I will. I would like to say goodbye myself if I can-”

“They’re already gone, Eva, we have to move quickly, you understand.” Alice’s rage played in my head again, Emmetts confusion, Esme’s heartbreak...

“I can’t even say goodbye to Alice? Surely shed text-”

“Already ditched our phones, I really am sorry Eva. We just can’t leave any loose ends.”

She was silent for a long moment, but when she finally, for the first time, met my eyes, what I saw reflected behind them nearly made me flinch back, from a  _ human. _

It was  _ Hellfire _ , rage like I’d never seen, bitter betrayal, anguish, the flame erupted into a wildfire before my eyes.

“You’re really just going to leave it like this? Just toss it because it got boring? Don’t try and act like this is noble! I’m still a fucking person. I gave you so much of me, more than I’ve ever given anyone, and you can’t even acknowledge that? You might be immortal Edward, but I’m not. My life is not a fucking toy for you to pick up and throw away!”

She spat at me, advancing one step, and I’d been so unprepared for her reaction, her words, they struck me like punches.

“Eva..” I wanted so badly to crush her to me, to take it all back now. She had every right to feel angry, to feel betrayed, maybe this was for the best. But to think I viewed her as trash, as a used doll with no value, blew a hole into the center of my chest. Had I not said over and over how she meant everything to me, how there was no point without her, but these words, these lies somehow erased them? Could she really not see through me now? How could she believe this? How was she believing me?  _ Isn’t this what I wanted? _

“You’re human, your memory is like a sieve. I promise I’ll take it all with me, it will be as though I never existed. You can return to your life, you’ll forget me in time-” I began, if I left nothing of myself behind, it would make it easier, she could forget this world of monsters, she could go on and reach the goals she’d had before I had soiled her life.

“Don’t you  _ DARE _ .” The fury in her roared words actually stunned me to silence.

“You really think so fucking  _ little _ of me that you can do this and I will just go back to being who I was before I met you? That  _ this  _ meant so little to me?! Have you never listened to a word I said?!”

“No, Eva-”

“Shut up! You will damn well listen to me, you owe me that much!” 

She had approached me now, and pressed her index finger firmly into the center of my chest. Tears poured down her face, and I felt another crack form in the stone of my body. I quieted, this was not going in the way I expected it too, and I was beginning to second guess myself, second guess what I believed.

“I will never be able to do that, you understand? You have eternity, I am a blip in your fucking timeline. You changed the world. You changed me in irreversible ways. If you’re just looking for your shit back-”

She reached up to her throat, and tore off my pendant, shoving it into my chest-

“You can fucking have it. But don’t you dare make another promise that is as hollow as the rest of them.”

Her voice cracked now, and she snapped her teeth together to hold something back. 

_ I had made a mistake.  _

I had assumed that she would forget me eventually, that I would become an ex-boyfriend she no longer thought about one day, I thought human memories would work that way. But simply looking into her eyes now, as she held my gaze in her own endless blue eyes, clear as day, I realized that I had severely underestimated Eva’s feelings for me. I had underestimated how I’d affected her life. 

Of course she would never be able to forget, I had expanded her knowledge of the world irreversibly, I had brought her into an entirely different universe than she’d lived in before.

“You can promise me one thing. You can promise you won’t do this to someone else, you wont turn someone inside out “by mistake” and then leave them like that, expecting them to fit into the same shape they used to. It’s not a thing. I am finite. My hours and minutes mean something. I thought Carlisle would have been able to teach you that, but maybe you’ll learn now.”

She coughed and wheezed in pain. Clutching over her scar, spitting blood onto the ground, I knew she was agitating her injury with her yelling, but what right did I have to tell her to calm down? To comfort her? 

She was right.

She was always right.

I nearly crumbled then. But how on earth could I take any of this back? How on earth could I repair the damage I had just done to both of us? Even worse, she truly, honestly believed that I saw her as nothing. A mistake. Trash. The thought would have made me sick were I human, and my eyes stung with venom, and I had to freeze in place to hold myself back from falling apart then and there. Did this mean  _ she  _ also believed herself so...worthless? 

She was everything, she was my sun and moon and stars, my Renaissance, my Rabbit, my Persephone, my wildfire. And I had just fully convinced her that she, in all of her glory, was worthless to me. 

Her words took over my head then, and the eternity before me, hollow and bleak, stretched and shaped around them.

_ I am finite. _

“....I promise.” 

_ What have I done?  _

“That all being said…” 

I was still frozen, but the tone of her voice had changed, calming, her tears slowing. She held my gaze, masking nothing, letting me see all of her anguish, her anger, her agony.

“....Thank you. For your time. The good memories will hurt now, but eventually I might be able to revisit them...but if you want a clean break, you are going to have to break me, once and for all Edward. Do not leave a window open. Do not leave a gap.”

_ “...you are going to have to break me.” _

I saw everything in that moment, I supposed it was fitting, my life flashing before my eyes before I died. Every second since I met her, every glorious moment in her arms, her light and warmth filling me, how everything seemed technicolor when she was beside me. Eva smiling at me with that devilish little gleam in her eyes. Eva teasing me. Eva in my arms, swaying with me,  _ La Vie en Rose  _ on her soft lips as she gazed up at me with an affection I’d never believed possible, how that vision of her had been so precious to me I’d committed it to memory in perfect detail. Eva asleep beside me. Eva whispering my name. Eva kissing me. Eva holding my hand. Eva happy. Eva vibrant.

Eva bruised, broken, bleeding, and pulseless on a gurney. 

And even then, even in this moment, a moment I realized neither of us would ever forget, she had thanked me for my time. As though my presence in her life had been, somehow, a gift. 

_ “ break me once and for all.” _

_ What have I  _ done _? _

I had to honor this last request from her. There was no going back for me now, there was nothing to return to, I had destroyed every beautiful thing, any purpose I had in this world. 

Alice was right. I had just made the greatest mistake of my existence, there was no way to fix it now. 

At least I could know that she had survived me. Even I, unable to do anything but kill and destroy, had not put out her flame.

I prayed to her god that they would look after her, that they would take everything and anything from me. She could have it all, if it meant she could be happy someday. 

“...I don’t love you, Eva. I don’t think I ever did. I’m tired of pretending to be something I’m not. I need a change.” 

I let the self loathing leak into my voice as I spoke the words, and I watched her beautiful, clear blue eyes fade and become hollow. Her posture weakened, but she remained standing. 

“I’m sorry. Please...take care of yourself.” 

I stepped forward, pressing my last kiss to her forehead, inhaling her scent.

I couldn’t look back, but I had to do one last thing. I could never forgive myself for what I had just done, but this was hers. And I couldn’t take it with me. The pendant felt like it held my heart, and it could never belong to anyone else. I was in her bedroom, placing the pendant carefully on her desk and grabbing a pen, I started several notes, my very last words to her, nothing felt right until her previous sentiment came to the forefront of my mind. 

She had shown me love and acceptance I’d never believed possible. She had taught me and shown me what pure, unadulterated joy was. I had known the best months of my life at her side.

Thank you.

_ Goodbye, my one and only love. My flame. My bizarre woman. _

I ran. 

I wasn’t sure where I was running, but I knew I was pushing my car past its limit of speed. I couldn’t stop, I knew if I stopped I would turn back. I would try, on hands and knees, groveling like a dog for her to understand I hadn’t meant any of it. That she was everything. I had abandoned the BMW at some point, my attention all on our last exchange, 

_ “ break me once and for all.” _

I screamed, the anguish finally tearing it’s way out of my chest and throat in the form of the horrid sound, and I sobbed empty, heaving sounds, pushing myself harder, I was so deranged I ran directly into a cliff face, plowing through the first several feet like a drill in my speed. 

“DAMMIT!” The words echoed around me, I was enraged by the sudden interruption, punching the stone in front of me hard enough to make another layer crumble. It felt good, my knuckles cracking from the force, a relief, pain, stimuli, absolute and utter fury.

“DAMMIT, DAMMIT, DAMMIT!-” I swung with every curse, pounding my way several feet deeper into the mountain, but it was futile. I choked on my own throat, collapsing to my knees and then forward onto my elbows. And cried.

All I could see was her face, all I could hear was her voice, every happy memory had been replaced with my blasphemy that had severed my heart from me. I rolled onto my side, and I couldn’t fight the grief any longer. 

I forgot about time, I forgot about everything, replaying my life with her over and over in my head. 

And I let myself rot.


End file.
